Goodreads is Over: A totally biased list of reasons

Beyond the Soylent Green era of literature content

I am a whole person who writes this newsletter about books, but I know of at least one fictional character who has a more transparent book life than I do.

Louise Erdrich appended a seven-page Totally Biased List of Tookie’s favorite books, broken into themed sublists, to The Sentence. As a literary device, the list brings home the book’s faith in readers to develop the collective understanding of history and of human hearts needed to power social progress. And it’s also sublime.

I’ve never made or shared a list of my favorite books because I used to believe this kind of libromancy was an innately private experience. If managed or measured too closely, reading might lose its magic. But now I think it’s more vital than ever for readers to curate their experiences and authentically exchange energy with each other.

In general, I’m pro list. Often my lists improve proportional to the difficulty and import of something I aim to begin. When the desk has been cleared and all the socks in the la…